Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/96

72 constitutional forms; and nothing is more apt to undermine that respect and to foster disregard of those forms than warlike excitements, which at the same time give to the armed forces an importance and a prestige which they otherwise would not possess.

No candid observer of current events will deny that even to-day the spirit of the new policy awakened by the victories and conquests achieved in the Spanish war, and by the occurrences in the Philippines, has moved even otherwise sober-minded persons to speak of the Constitutional limitations of governmental power with a levity which a year ago would have provoked serious alarm and stern rebuke. We are loudly told by the advocates of the new policy that the Constitution no longer fits our present conditions and aspirations as a great and active world Power, and should not be permitted to stand in our way. Those who say so forget that it is still our Constitution; that while it exists its provisions as interpreted by our highest judicial tribunal are binding upon our actions as well as upon our consciences; that they will be binding and must be observed until they are changed in the manner prescribed by the Constitution itself for its amendment; and that if any power not granted by the Constitution is exercised by the Government or any branch of it, on the ground that the Constitution ought to be changed in order to fit new conditions, or on any other ground, usurpation in the line of arbitrary government is already an accomplished fact. And if such usurpations be submitted to by the people, that acquiescence will become an incentive to further usurpations which may end in the complete wreck of Constitutional government.

Such usurpations are most apt to be acquiesced in when, in time of war, they appeal to popular feeling in the name of military necessity, or of the honor of the flag, or of National glory. In a democracy acting through